ETA: Britain’s first climate neutral home insurance to off-set against customers’ usage

Now that green really is the new black, you can offset your household emissions, as well as emissions from your car, with the Environmental Transport Association’s (ETA) climate neutral home insurance package. The ETA is the only organisation providing home insurance with off-setting based on customer usage. This covers both contents and buildings, and the ETA will make a contribution on your behalf to one of its carbon-offsetting projects around the world.



The amount of carbon dioxide that will be offset on your behalf will be equivalent to the emissions from your home* for the same period of your insurance. The ETA will even send you a green certificate to confirm that the appropriate contribution has been made.



The ETA works in partnership with Climate Care on projects in developing world countries to neutralize your CO2 emissions against sustainable projects that will reduce the amount of harmful greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere. These projects also provide a wider benefit for the environment and local communities such as providing efficient cooking stoves – see editor’s notes.


“We at the ETA have been offsetting our carbon footprint for years,” says Andrew Davis director of the ETA. “As we try to reduce, re-use and recycle it is rarely possible to reduce our carbon footprint to zero. Today we are extending our offsetting to include the home as well for all our members’ who have already converted to green electricity.”


* Calculation is based on the emissions from an average three-bedroom house using gas central heating and green electricity.

Ends

Editors’ Notes

Stoves Project 1: Nishant Bioenergy

In the Punjab, as across India , schools cook their food on expensive LPG, a fossil fuel. Meanwhile, people who made biomass briquettes are struggling to make a living as there is little demand for their fuel. At the same time farmers are burning their crop wastes in the fields - which is wasting a valuable energy resource.

Enter Ramesh Nibhoria a local engineer and entrepreneur who solved three problems at once. He has developed the Sanja Chulha - literally, 'combined cookstove' - which is specially designed to run on briquettes made from crop waste left over from the harvest. These cut CO2 emissions (the crop waste is a renewable source of energy), cut schools' fuel bills and give a new income to the farmers, who can now sell their waste to the briquette makers. Ramesh builds the stoves and sells them to the schools on a "hire purchase" basis. As the briquettes are half the price of LPG schools pay Ramesh back from the money they save and own the stoves within eighteen months.

The problem that Ramesh faces is that he cannot fund a new stove until he has received the money back from the school - so his production was limited to three stoves a year. Although he has a large order book the banks have not lent him any money. The ETA’s carbon offset funding has provided a capital sum as a "revolving fund" which means he can gear up production to fifty units a year. Ramesh uses money from the fund to buy the materials he needs and to pay the wages; the fund is replenished as the schools pay back their loans – meaning the monies used again for more stoves.

Not only does this project reduce CO2 emissions through replacing fossil fuel with biofuel, it also benefits farmers through extra income and schools through lower fuel costs.

Stoves Project 2: Trees, Water, People

The traditional open wood stove provides a vital source of heat and energy for some of the poorest communities across the world. Yet these stoves can have a devastating impact on the health of the women and children who gather around them - and the local forests which are harvested for fuel. In Tegucigalpa , the capital of Honduras , over half of the homes rely on these stoves. Doctors have identified 97 distinct health problems caused or exacerbated by stove smoke - such as asthma, bronchitis and blocked tear ducts. UN studies show that smoky stoves kill millions - mainly women and small children - and cause debilitating illness for tens of millions more.

Trees, Water, People (TWP) and the Honduran Association for Development (ADHESA) are now bringing clean stoves to people in the city through the innovative Micro-Enterprise Stove Project. TWP has developed a series of stoves based on the "Rocket" principle. This means that ample air is drawn into the combustion chamber leading to a very clean burn.

A crucial benefit of this is that smoke from the stove is drastically reduced. Dona Justa, who was instrumental in the design of a new stove in her own community keeps one of her old blackened pots in her kitchen to show people, and is reported to have said: "If that is what my pot is like, what must my lungs have been like?"

TWP are keen to move from installing a few stoves on a subsidised basis to market commercialisation. The ETA 's carbon offset support has provided TWP with a fund from which their customers can borrow to purchase their stoves. Owners can afford to repay the loans as their full bills are cut by 50%. As the money is repaid it can be "recycled" by the fund and used again for more stoves. This micro finance model is a powerful tool for the long term dissemination of sustainable technologies.

The ETA offers a comprehensive breakdown service across Europe. Their services also include motor insurance, cycle insurance, cycle rescue, travel and house insurance plus vehicle inspection service.


The mission: The aim of the ETA is to be the ethical alternative to other motoring organisations. Through the services above funds are generated for the ETA’s campaigns.
The aims:

1. To help ETA members and the general public take practical steps in reducing their impact on the environment and to demonstrate that people who make such changes have a better quality of life.

2. To encourage government at all levels to understand the benefits of doing less but making more impact. ETA transport proposals would reduce the national government’s expenditure on transport to almost zero whilst improving the transport system.